Mars' southern mantle runs hotter, reshaping its interior story

New gravity data analyzed with tidal tomography from three NASA Mars missions (MGS, Mars Odyssey, MRO) show the southern hemisphere’s mantle is 200–400 C warmer than the north, possibly partly molten. This non-symmetric interior helps explain Mars’s pronounced north–south dichotomy and has implications for its volcanic and magnetic history, hydrology, and crustal evolution. The finding, published in Nature, points to future missions probing the planet’s interior.